As high schools throughout the Bronx and the rest of New York City began holding graduation ceremonies this June, the Department of Education and the mayor’s office proudly announced last year’s four-year graduation rates as the highest the city has ever seen — 65.1 percent, according to state figures.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg pointed to the latest numbers, which also included gains across every ethnic group and in the number of Regents and Advanced Regents diplomas awarded, as evidence the city’s reform plan of replacing underperforming schools with new, smaller schools, is working. The gains represented a ninth straight year of increasingly higher graduation rates for the city as a whole. “These new high school graduation rates are proof positive that the reforms we’ve adopted and the investments we’ve made are paying off in a big way,” Bloomberg said.

While the Bronx rate continued to inch higher, up 0.5 percentage points from last year to 54.7 percent, it lags a full 10 points behind the city rate.

Here in the northwest Bronx, the picture is more muddled. Of the 16 local high schools we included in the chart below, all except for High School for American Studies (which has increased its rates or kept them the same over the past four years), have seen their rates fluctuate up and down over the past five years.

The average graduation rate of the local schools included is 70 percent, five points higher than the city rate. But if you take out the Bronx High School of Science and High School for American Studies (each requires an entrance exam and students are taken from a citywide pool), the number is 66 percent, still slightly higher than the city rate. However, nine of the 16 schools had rates below the city rate.